By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — After warning in a talk here that the United States is at an “absolutely pivotal” moment, saline-abortion survivor Gianna Jessen told The Wanderer that the “horrendous” abortion situation continues because people have “grown somewhat indifferent and cold.”
Jessen and another saline survivor, Melissa Ohden, were among the four leadoff witnesses testifying to congressional investigators in Washington, D.C., on September 9 as the Republican-led U.S. House began hearings into Planned Parenthood, prompted by sting videos from the Center for Medical Progress that underlined the abortion giant’s barbarity.
Both women were aborted as babies in 1977, Jessen in southern California and Ohden in Iowa.
Because Jessen was called to Capitol Hill due to the videos, The Wanderer asked her opinion of them as she visited here on October 17.
“They’re horrendous,” Jessen replied. “I don’t understand why there’s not a national outrage about the dismemberment and sale of unborn children.”
When this writer suggested there might be more outrage if the videos had received more attention instead of being suppressed by many major media, she differed, saying: “I think we’ve grown somewhat indifferent and cold, and indifference is hatred, really. The opposite of love is indifference.”
Earlier in the evening, Jessen spoke to about 200 people at a gathering sponsored by Arizona Right to Life at North Phoenix Baptist Church, calling on men to defend this nation and its women and children, including the unborn.
“So, men, if you don’t want this country to go to hell, stand up and take it back,” she said as she neared the end of her 52-minute talk. “I worry about how we have emasculated our men. . . .
“Christian women, we need to let our men be men,” Jessen said. “. . . Stand up and defend women and children. . . . You are made to protect (them). . . . Passivity causes so much pain, I can’t tell you. It is like a cancer in the Christian community among Christian men. . . . God is not passive. Have you read the Scripture?”
Saying she had been a “strong-willed child,” Jessen said she hadn’t understood why having a will was bad. Today, that determination has taken on new dimensions. “Do you understand the will that stands up for life in the midst of death?”
With the United States currently at an “absolutely pivotal” time, Jessen said, she hopes to speak with some of the nation’s Founders when she gets to Heaven and say, “. . . I tried to fight for the nation that you gave me. . . . I tried to live, and not make a mockery of your sacrifice.”
From the time of her abortion survival, Jessen has faced challenges, first to her own health and later to opposing the Culture of Death imposed on society. She has cerebral palsy from the abortion but travels widely with her pro-life message.
After her Phoenix visit, she departed for home in Franklin, Tenn. Her looming itinerary includes Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Alaska, and Malta, she said.
“I’ve completed two marathons at this point in my life,” she told the Phoenix audience, but in the last year or so has begun to have balance issues which are being evaluated medically.
“I am God’s girl. I feel absolutely God’s girl . . . marching through the world, proclaiming His name,” Jessen said as she began her talk.
“The Lord was for me and still is,” she added later, then switched to the third person: “The more you try to come against her (Jessen), the more she will talk about Jesus.”
Her early time in foster care wasn’t helpful, she said, explaining that she was “32 pounds of dead weight” before foster mother Penny Smith took charge, providing the care that Jessen needed to sit up, crawl, and walk.
“She just changed my life,” Jessen said, even though doctors had said, “Gianna will never be anything more than a vegetable” following her premature entry into the world.
Smith died two years ago, at age 91, Jessen said, adding, “I don’t know if people can see you from Heaven,” but she wonders if Smith was aware of her September congressional testimony and said, “That’s my girl.”
Jessen, 38, survived a saline abortion performed by mega-abortionist Edward Allred, MD, in Los Angeles in April 1977. The following year she was taken to a courtroom in neighboring Orange County, Calif., to be a living exhibit that babies can survive abortion in a homicide trial I was covering.
The abortionist on trial, William Waddill, MD., who claimed he couldn’t conceive of a baby surviving a harsh process like saline abortion, was accused of strangling a baby girl in a newborn nursery who survived the saline abortion he administered. Waddill was said to fear possible lawsuits because he assumed his victim, Baby Girl Weaver, would be brain-damaged by his procedure.
The prosecution told reporters that it received word from around the nation about other abortion survivals — contrary to Waddill’s claims of their unlikelihood. Prosecutor Bob Chatterton brought two baby girls, including Jessen, into the courtroom who had survived southern California saline abortions at about the same time as Baby Weaver.
Waddill went through two mistrials but neither was acquitted nor convicted.
A procession of medical witnesses had testified on the stand about various aspects at the proceedings in Orange County Superior Court, including Allred, who aborted Jessen but wasn’t accused of any crime.
Jessen also spoke to the North Phoenix Baptist Church audience about some of her emotional challenges.
“When you have cerebral palsy, it is misery on your dating life,” the unmarried Jessen said, illustrating that she’s put off by men saying she’s “so special” or “special and inspirational.”
This isn’t the same as being told, “I want you to be the mother of my children right now,” Jessen said. “. . . Men just can’t handle the way you walk.”
Adding that she’d rather die alone “than settle for some tepid love affair,” Jessen said, “I will marry a noble soul. . . . I have had a broken heart more times than I can tell you.”
Expressing concern for others as well as gratitude for her own life, Jessen said, “You can imagine how horrified I am when I hear, ‘If the baby is disabled, we need to terminate the pregnancy’.”
She asked for prayers for Iranian-American Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, imprisoned for three years in Iran, “and for his beloved wife and children,” as well as for Israel and “for the peace of Jerusalem.”
Continuing Surprises
After her talk, Jessen posed for photos with a long line of audience members who wanted a token of her visit, then I gave her a lift back to her hotel, with a stop on the way for two Mexican pizzas with extra fiery sauce at a drive-through.
She remarked to me about a situation she also had just tweeted about: “The left brags about its compassion. Angry pro-choice people adore me because I am disabled. Until they learn I survived an abortion.”
Back at the hotel before 9 p.m. for the pizza dinner from a sack, Jessen had to be up early the next morning for the flight home.
“My life is so funny” the way things happen sometime, she’d told the North Phoenix Baptist audience.
It all began with her surprise survival at an abortuary, and even continues today with this reporter who saw her as an unknown baby in 1978 stopping to get her Mexican pizzas in 2015.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress